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Liam Malheur-Randell
Liam Malheur-Randell is a Rabanastrian organist, residing in the La Cabana theatre, Kerwon. He is an excellent musician gifted with a superb ear, able to transcribe and interpret entire orchestral works on his instrument. He is also a gifted engineer, and is responsible for the working order of both of Ivalice's most well-known pipe organs. He is a polyglot - he speaks English and French with equal fluency, but isn't usually consciously aware of which language he's speaking at a given moment. He is the estranged brother of Samantha Malheur-Randell and brother-in-law of Hurdy. He is also a cousin of Mira Randell. The character of Liam Malheur-Randell is a deliberate allusion to Jean Valjean of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, a classic of French literature. Thematically, he is designed as a contrast to Mira - undone by his own ego and naivity, he is crushed by the enemy whom Mira seeks to later defeat. While his appearence in FFTA3 is relatively minor, most of Liam's life is covered in the in-progress fanfic and companion work, We, Who Suggest Ourselves . Life Pre-''WWSO'' - Early Life Liam is the first of two children, born to Samantha Randell Snr. and Aristide Malheur. His parents were never married and lived across two countries - his mother in St. Ives, England, and his father in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France. Liam was both a French citizen (born in France) and an English citizen (inherited from mother), which made the resultant custody battle between his parents even more bitter; it was almost like a war had broken out between their two countries. Further, each rejected the others' culture, and expected Liam to follow their own virtues when living with them. As Liam was shuttled back and forth between St. Ives and Chamonix, he became increasingly unsure of where he should call home, and indeed, to what country he rightly belonged. It is for this reason that Liam is equally fluent in French and English. Aristide was a church organist, and took Liam under his wing, training him with moderate success to become a competent musician. Samantha was a quantum physicist who officially worked at CERN in Geneva, not so far from Chamonix, but even when on the mainland she rarely visited. In fact, Liam's parents insisted on having as little to do with each other as feasibly possible, seeing no more value in each other's professions than in their cultures as well as blaming each other for ending up with their unplanned child. After a number of years, Liam became fascinated with the study of organ-building, and realised that it required equal parts musicianship and engineering. Using this link, he was able to begin the reconcilliation between his parents and thereby brought them back together - at least, until the next unplanned pregnancy. With the birth of Samantha Aristide wrote the Randells off, leaving Samantha with the burden of parenting - he even named the baby girl Samantha out of sheer spite. Samantha Snr. was now quite burdened but managed to carry on for the longest while. Liam and Samantha became extremely close, not least because he was filling both a filial and a paternal role. Samantha only ever spoke English, and spending enough time around her caused Liam to slightly neglect his French. Some years later Samantha's father, Mewt Randell, fell ill. It was the beginning of the end for the patriarch of the Randell family, so he began to pass on his possessions. Of particular note was a book, quite large and well-decorated in various geometric patterns. Aristide heard of it, and was interested in it as a piece of art, with a mind to 'liberate' it from England; Samantha found more interesting the question of how a seemingly innocuous albiet completely unreadable book could be made to glow without any visible power source. Aristide came to try and take it, and started a ferocious argument with Samantha before a loud explosion issued forth from the book. When Liam came up to inspect, his parents were still there, only that his father failed to recognise him and rushed out of the house with the book, never to be seen again. His mother, meanwhile, lay in a coma that was to last the rest of her life. Since they were not of age, the English social services had to try and accomodate them. As they were illegitimate, they were not entitled to stay with any of their relatives, and so were taken into state care. This was the arrangement for several years until Liam turned eighteen, and was granted custody of his sister. They moved north to Blackpool, where Liam made a living as a theatre organist. The pay was enough to cover their modest living expenses plus a little extra to set aside for later. ''Prologue'' Liam had long planned to take Samantha on an excursion through continental Europe, to show her all the wonderful places Aristide had taken him through over the years. This trip did have an ulterior motive, as Liam was convinced his father was still alive after all these years, and intended to find him. The pair set out for Europe, coming through Italy, Germany and Chamonix. While there, they recieved word that their mother's condition was deteriorating, so Liam was forced to make haste to the nearby airport in Geneva and return to St. Ives. Due to what is apparently a freak accident at CERN, they are both killed in their sleep before they get there. Suddenly, Ivalice The pair awake to find themselves in a totally unfamiliar place, covered in fur and suddenly beset with the most bizzare verbal tic either of which either of them had heard. Further, they awoke in the middle of a violent thunderstorm, and were forced to take shelter for the night before they could even begin to fathom these happenings. These difficulties notwithstanding, they found - or rather, were found by a large yellow bird (which made no small point of demonstrating an intense dislike of Liam, though it had no issues with his sister) and ambled along to the nearest settlement they could find. This settlement appeared to be a large walled city, filled with all manner of bipedal creatures that they had never seen before (themselves included) and devoid of all technology. While it was easy to suggest that they had walked into a fairy-tale, if Liam looked past the odd-looking denizens to the architecture he could almost pretend he was in a very old European city, such as Paris. It occured to Liam that it might be wise to ask for help, so he walked into a nearby shop. The shop was staffed by a being resembling what he himself had become, which made him feel slightly more comfortable. The creature, who identified himself as Horne, noted that the 'yellow bird' belonged to his sister, Gurdy, and probably broke lose in the storm last night. After stabling the chocobo, Horne invited them back to his shop for some pleasant conversation and refreshment. Liam did consider asking about the condition of suddenly being transported god only knows how many miles from home and being turned into a sentient bipedal lagomorph, but when Liam said he'd come from Chamonix and Horne said he hadn't so much as heard of Europe itself, Liam figured that his problems ran deeper than probably most people in the city could help him with and so decided to, at least for the time being, keep them to himself. Horne did point out that Liam was in a place called Rabanastre , in the kingdom of Dalmasca , but this did not alleviate Liam's problems of geographical displacement at all. It did, however, at least put a name to the place it seemed he was now to call home. At this moment another creature like Horne dressed in blue came rushing in the door. He said that Gurdy herself had been caught in the storm and was gravely injured. Without a word, everyone rushed to follow this newcomer to a makeshift hospital, where Gurdy was found to be not even slightly injured, albiet thoroughly miserable over the loss of a chocobo. When Horne told her that they'd found it, and more pertinently who found it, Gurdy was overjoyed and insisted that they stay with her, which Liam initially interpreted as being for the evening - but as soon as he let slip that he had nowhere to live, Gurdy clarified that she had meant 'as long as they were to need a place to stay'. Still trying to make sense of this whirlwind of hospitality, Liam agreed. Start of career Liam realised 'as long as they were to need a place to stay' might be a very long time indeed, so he tried to find some gainful employment to alleviate his burden on Gurdy. Unfortunately, as in the modern world, musicians are usually quite poorly paid, and Liam couldn't find so much as a keyboard instrument to play. That was, until he met the moogle from yesterday. Calling himself Hurdy, he showed him around town, all the good places to busk, until Liam broke it to him that the only instrument he had any experience playing was the size of a building and not the least bit portable. At this, Hurdy took him straight to Rabanastre Cathedral, where to Liam's utter disbelief there stood a complete pipe organ of no less than forty ranks, voiced almost exactly the same way as the French Romantic pipe organs he'd learned on under his father. Unfortunately, the instrument had been designed for a hume to play, and the console was rather too large to be worked by someone of Liam's diminuitive size. Further, the instrument had not been played in nearly twenty years and had fallen into disrepair at least severe enough to render it unplayable and possibly irreperable. With this in mind, Hurdy directed Liam to his brother Nono, who agreed to help him attempt to repair it. The pair started by making minor repairs to the largely intact pipework, followed by a radical rebuild of the winding system - replacing the old hand-forced bellows with a new mechanical fan-forced system. They found an old, largely broken moogle-sized harpsichord to use as a console and fitted barker levers (essentially power steering for organ keys) to make it possible for Liam to play it with his small fingers. After some work, they managed to get the instrument to sound for the first time in decades, and after some extensive tuning managed to make it playable. The Kiltian clerics were delighted to have the instrument working again, as it would attract greater numbers to the church. When Liam demonstrated that he could in fact play it, they happily offered him tenure, and hence a paid job playing during masses, as well as in between when he felt like putting on a show. As a result, Liam was happy to be able to provide for himself whilst being able to rekindle a passion. 'Le Grande Organiste' Liam christened the instrument "le Grand Orgue de la Cathédrale de Rabanastre." Although he was the only living Ivalician with any knowledge of French, he soon found that it stuck, to the point that he found some of the populace had abridged this honorific to dub him "le Grand Organiste." Whether or not they actually thought he was at all grande ''was another matter, since some people did it simply because it was making fun of a lot of words they didn't understand. Whatever the reason, there was fairly universal acclaim for his music, which was largely improvised and interpreted from his own background in both classical music and show tunes; of course, this still all sounded original to the Ivalician audiences who had never heard any of it before. There came one day sometime after this where an incident occured at Horne's shop. It appeared that Horne had been attempting some transmutation before something went uncharactaristically wrong and blew up in his face. Gravely injured, it looked like he was going to die even with medical attention, until the most unexpected miracle happened - Sammy laid her hands upon him and he recovered on the spot. The feat, which was completely unexpected to all present, was witnessed by some Akademy mages from Moorabella, who reported it to their superiors. Shortly thereafter, Liam and Sammy were approached by a representative of the Akademy, offering her a scholarship in view of her 'extraordinary talents.' Sammy was hesitant at first, and Liam was hesitant to encourage her until Gurdy mentioned that her older brother was a first-year teacher and would be able to look out for her. Trusting in this, Liam encouraged Sammy to pursue it, and the next day they departed for Moorabella. Liam saw her all the way to the gates, past which point he could not proceed, and so bid her a slightly tearful but contented '''au reviour,'' kupo''.' ''Les Miserables'' Before returning to Rabanastre, Liam met a Nu Mou businessman who identified as Seghda Clamprior. He expressed interest in Liam's talents, and produced - quite remarkably - the libretto for'' Les Miserables'', a favourite musical and novel of Liam's. He said that if Liam could put the music together, he would find a cast and they could put on a show.The pair returned to Rabanastre and commenced work immediately. Seghda did not have the musical score, but Liam was familar enough with the music to transcribe it by ear and produce a reduction for solo organist, with a few caveats. When Hurdy expressed interest, Liam offset some of these difficulties by expanding the arrangement to include lute and violin, though Liam still wanted to add percussion to it. Nono put forward that he would have stepped in if he had any musicality about him, at which point Liam gave him a rundown on music theory in terms of engineering. Music is simply organised sound. The marks on the page tell you what to hit, for how long and how hard. That is all that you should require for now, kupo. - Liam Malheur-Randell, explaining music to Nono The three were able to get through most of the music after a few rehearsals, at which point Seghda revealed his cast - a ragtag assortion of slightly dishelvelled-looking persons who did strike Liam as being a bit on the seedy side. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he went through each of them and found roles, casting a hume as Javert, pair of Seeq as the Thénardiers, a Nu Mou as Valjean and a moogle and viera each as the two Cosettes (one young, one older), among others.The production was a hit, attracting primarily, to Liam's bemusement (and probably an early warning sign) the lower classes. It seemed that the notion of revolution and fighting for one's rights were popular, and the Thénardiers were especially popular since they were taken as a parody of the upper class. With the concentration of potential 'undesirables' in one place, the Watch started attending performances to keep order and make sure nothing untoward happened. And then something very untoward happened. The Final Battle During a performance of the scene wherein Gavroche dies, a particularly savvy member of the watch noticed that the cast had swapped their prop muskets for very real weapons. As Gavroche moved forwards to gather ammunition and be shot, as per the script, a Watch sniper opened fire on him. He continued his part down to the bitter end, actually dying onstage - which everyone, including Liam, thought a part of the show. As it happened, the real muskets were going to be used later to hold the audience up. Even though the ideas of the musical were just acting, the very real death of Gavroche transformed, in a split second, a bunch of actors into a very real force of revolutionaries at a very real barricade. The as-scripted firefight turned the cathedral into a bloodbath, and a mass panic ensued as everyone tried to get out of the building as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the Red Wings had already locked the doors, and told everyone to remain calm while they looted. Utterly disgusted with himself for being the reason this was allowed to occur, Liam rushed for the belltower, in the hope of ringing the bell and calling the city guard. Once Liam reached the top of the belltower, he realised he was faced with a serious problem - the Great Bell weighed over half a ton, more thirty times what he himself weighed. He realised that he had no way of ringing the bell by himself, and was now cornered at the top of the a tower. Taking offence at his attempted 'betrayal,' the Red Wings tied him up with the bellropes and beat him half to death. Over and over the Seeq he had cast as the Thenardiers lived up to their roles, being as vicious and brutal as they could possibly manage. By the end of it, Liam's white fur was stained red with his own blood. For Liam, The End? As a final spetacle, the Red Wings 'gave' him the bellrope he'd wanted to pull - by tying it onto his pom-pom and hanging him out over the two-hundred-foot drop to the bottom of the belltower. Such was his agony that he could barely whimper. Tears flowed from his eyes as he felt the life slowly ebb from him, dripping from open wounds. His spirit defeated, he saw his life flash by his eyes, and an old English nursery rhyme popped into his head. As what he presumed to be his last words, he recited it, mustering what strength he had left into making his lips move. This final snapping of his mind had an unexpected side-effect - he recited the nursery rhyme in the presence of a Seeq. Calling a Seeq a pig is rather like calling a Bangaa a lizard - not ever done unless you really do have a deathwish. As it happened, even if Liam had ever been made aware of the slur, he wasn't addressing the Seeq in the room - but that was how it was taken. Immediately one of them charged at him, leaping over the edge of the balcony and tackling him on the bellrope. It was only after he'd dived for him that he realised what he'd got himself into - he was now hanging by a moogle off a bellrope suspended over a very long drop to certain death. He managed to grip the rope, but at this point the force of his bodyweight pulled the rope down, tipping the bell enough to sound it. He then slipped and gripped Liam, putting all the force of holding them both up on the stalk of Liam's pom-pom. While strong, pom-pom stalks were never meant to take strain forces well over ten times greater than the moogle's own bodyweight, and so Liam's pom-pom literally tore off, sending both of them plummetting to what should have been certain death. Only a Flesh Wound Liam woke up in a bed at Gurdy's house, surrounded by her family, and Sammy. Gurdy had washed most of the blood out of his fur, and Sammy, now a competent white mage (in spite of her race) had healed the worst of his injuries - though she could not fix his pom-pom, he would have to wait a week or so for that to regrow. What Liam didn't get was how he'd survived the fall at all, which a sixth sibling spoke up to explain. This sibling, who introduced himself as Montblanc, informed him that he and Sammy had managed to get into the building shortly before the bell rang, having been forewarned that the Red Wings were planning something dastardly. When it rang, they had both looked up to see them falling. Nothing much could be done for the Seeq in the split-second he had to react, but he'd managed to cast Slow on him, making the fall relatively mild in comparison to his other injuries. After that he worked with Sammy and another pupil to stabilise him and bring him back to recover. The city guard had rounded up most of the Red Wings as they tried to escape, but there was a rumour that the mastermind was still at large. Even so, Montblanc was convinced that he wouldn't be hearing from them again in a fairly long time. Sammy then confessed that she had, in her time away, met someone - someone who made her feel a way that only Liam himself had made her feel before. Liam realised that she'd begun to fall in love with someone else, which made him feel at once elated and slightly miserable - it meant that his little girl was growing up. Realising that his near-death experience proved that he was not capable of protecting himself in this world, much less her, he encouraged her to seek out that special someone and confess her feelings, with his blessing. After a few days recuperating, Liam returned to Rabanastre Cathedral to a hero's welcome - he was (somewhat wrongly) credited with the capture of the Red Wings, having rung the bell that summoned reinforcements, as well as cleverly drawing them into one place to be captured. While disgusted with the misrepresentation of facts, Liam realised that if it ever got out that the unnecessary deaths that transpired on that day were a direct result of his ill-thought-out actions he'd be lynched. And so, once more, he kept them to himself. Masterminds. In fact, it hadn't really been his fault at all, though it were made to seem that way to him. Segdha Clamprior, whose real name was Edgar Burkhalter, had successfully used Liam to show the Cathedral as being 'unsafe,' a problem the Watch addressed by stationing more guards and preventing the uninvited public from entering during special services. Further, he'd managed to position his adoptive son, Eoin, to get close to his sister (the feelings were genuine, even if Edgar deliberately put the two together long enough to start developing feelings for each other). Edgar was in fact an agent of the Occuria, carrying out a plan they had unsuccessfully tried several times before with many different people. The plan was essentially like this - take people from outside Ivalice across the Rift into Ivalice using the Gran Grimore. As the pass the Rift, they become imbued with a lot of Mist , which the Occuria use to give them properties akin to Nethicite (i.e. Mist-absorbtion). This is in fact the procedure for making Deifacted Nethicite - a person is imbued with so much Mist that it catalyses and crystallises their organic structure, turning them into a Cryst. Unfortunately, in all previous attempts, the Occuria had either started too late or the subjects had managed to escape before the process completed. This time, the Occuria had placed Liam in a fairly static position with a static, paid job that he enjoyed doing - distracting him from wanting to leave. Further, his sister was learning magick, which both furthered this distraction as well as increasing her Mist throughput. It was mostly Sammy they were interested in, since Liam had almost no command of magick whatsoever and had far too little Mist throughput to make the transformation even remotely useful. Instead, they used him to buy time to get Sammy ready for her transformation. Wherein Charles Dickens spins in his grave As time progressed, Sammy started to feel dizzy and had strange dreams. Montblanc was immediately suspicious, and wrote to his contacts in the Akademy to try and find an explanation. The effort was in vain; and day by day, despite everyone's best efforts, Sammy began to slowly die. And then, out of nowhere, a solution from a familar face - Seghda Clamprior appears, and tells to Liam an old ritual involving the fusion of magick and sound that could 'cure' her condition. With no other options, Liam takes him up on the offer. It turned out the the Grande Orgue was the perfect tool for the job, but even its power is inadequate - it would require the addition of a new rank, consisting of a single, 32-foot diaphonic reed pipe which would act as the source of the sound. To run this stop, Liam had to recalibrate the winding system to almost double the original specified power, pushing the mechanical blower fan engine to the limit. The pipe was so huge it went underground, largely situated in the sewers below. Finally, the pipe was ready. Liam and Seghda took Sammy to the Cathedral one evening, and they were locked in for the night. Seghda commened the ritual, tying the unconscious Sammy down on a pentagram he drew in chalk and intoning prayers. He told Liam to ready the organ and draw the new 32-foot stop, which they had dubbed the 'Cul du Dieu.' He instructed Liam to play the note it sounded, which he did - and then all hell broke loose. Edgar had sabotaged the organ so that once sounded, the pipe would cipher and become impossible to silence. Adding to its power, Edgar threw Eoin into the blower engine's furnance, using his magick to increase the yield of the magicite already running it. The pipe itself sounded for miles around, and was tuned by design to a frequency Liam realised was causing nethicite everywhere to resonate and shatter, releasing Mist into the air. Further, the pipe was sucking enormous amounts of wind through it and pumping it back through the sewers, slightly lowering the atmospheric pressure in the vicinity of Rabanastre, starting a storm which blew the Mist into the Cathedral. The Mist was then forced by Edgar's apparatus through Sam's body, beginning the crystallisation process. Liam realised to his absolute horror that he has been used to stage an apocalypse, with his sister as the sacrifice to make it happen. Edgar pulls a gun on him and tells him to keep his place. At this, Liam realises that there really is nothing he can do, and sinks into despair. Around the cathedral, ghostly visions are appearing. Edgar recognises them as visitiations of his masters, the Occuria themselves. They congratulate him on the fine execution of the plan. His purpose is served, and as a reward allow him all of his past life back. In an instant, a reasonably healthy Edgar Burkhalter becomes a dying Aristide Malheur. Recognising his son, Aristide has just enough time to beg his son for forgiveness, before passing away and leaving Liam alone with the Occuria, who speak to him. We, Who Suggest Ourselves A brief explaination - the 'stolen gifts' are the manufacted nethicite, which is like deifacted nethicite except the Occuria don't control it (the gift of magick has been 'stolen' from their control). The Occuria are destroying the deifacted nethicite using the organ pipe and releasing the Mist into the atmosphere, where it is sent via the air currents to Sammy, where it is absorbed and crystallising. Eventually she will become a Cryst - their 'light to shine for all mortals' - replacing the former Great Cryst. Naturally, that involves Sammy's death, and Liam wasn't prepared to let that happen. However, he had no leverage or power, and so could only beg their favour. He was tested by the Occuria, who thereupon resolved: Immediately, Liam proceeded to draw full organ. This was a long and labourious process, since he did not have the benefit of the combination action drawing the stops for him - he had to pull all sixty-five of the draw-stops out by hand, which nearly exhausted him. Finally, he threw himself upon the keys, venting as much wind as he could throughout the rest of the organ. The resultant pressure drop starved the Cul du Dieu of wind and prevented it from sounding. This proved too much for the blower engine, which overloaded in a controlled explosion, finally bringing silence to Rabanastre Cathedral. Liam slumpted to the ground, and breathing the Mist-staled air could not hope to remain conscious. Estranged As morning came, Liam came to, and rushed to Sammy's side. To his joy, she woke up, and then it became clear that something was very wrong. Samantha did not recognise her brother. She brushed him away and left the Cathedral, making for Gurdy's house. Liam followed her, but neither he nor Gurdy seemed to be able to get her to come to her senses. She then spontaneously fell into convulsions, which got worse as Liam got closer. As he walked away, they eased, and Liam realised to his horror what the Occuria had meant - in disturbing the process he had become a part of it, and his being together with Sammy would complete it. What this left for him to do was tragically clear, ever more so as the city of Rabanstre levels the blame for the evening's events squarely at him. Liam left Rabanastre, and took himself as far away as he could to Kerwon. Before doing so, he arranges the marriage of Hurdy to Sammy, and sets his affairs in order. Upon arriving in Kerwon, he was found by a shady Seeq businessman, who decided to make use of his talents. They built a theatre and an organ to go with it, and Liam was to spend much of the rest of his life accompanying many, many tawdry productions. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 3 (For Liam, The End ? ) On their adventures through Kerwon, Clan Gizmo discovered the theatre in which Liam played regularly. At first, he just came across as a slightly mad moogle who plays music and does nothing else with his life, but gradually Mira became aware of his misery and he slowly confided in her his past, in the hope that she would not make his mistakes. Once Mira learns that her fate is to be simiar to his sister's, and once Liam learns that in spite of this Mira will not give in to the Occuria he is inspired, and encourages her to stay strong and fight in the way that he couldn't. This inspiration convinces him to return to Rabanastre to face his demons one last time. He returns on the day of Sammy's and Hurdy's wedding, and is able to watch it from afar. He names Hurdy his successor before giving the newlyweds the greatest gift he feels he can - eternal happiness. By jumping off the bell tower of Rabanastre Cathedral, and hence removing himself from the world, dying where he should have so long ago. Ahnentafel #Liam Malheur-Randell #Aristide Malheur #Samantha Randell Snr. #Not known (but rumored to be Luso Clemens) #Ritz Malheur #Mewt Randell #Not known Category:Final Fantasy Tactics A3 Characters